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157. Picturesque World’s Fair – Camel and Driver in Cairo Street

By |2023-10-17T05:30:04-05:00October 17th, 2023|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , |

CAMEL AND DRIVER IN CAIRO STREET.—The Cairo Street camels had varied duties to perform, at one time being hurried along with much mauling and gesticulation to convey a rider, or perhaps a couple, from one end of the street to the other and unload them hurriedly to make room for other experimenting people, and again, bedecked with cumbrous trappings, led along the same boisterous thoroughfare to take part in some procession alleged to be a duplicate of what may [...]

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Nixon Waterman Dreams of the World’s Fair

By |2024-01-18T09:55:52-06:00January 19th, 2024|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , |

A prolific writer of prose and verse, Nixon Waterman (1859–1944) is credited with having conducted the first all-verse column in newspaper history, for the Chicago Herald. He lived and wrote in Chicago in the years before and during the 1893 World’s Fair. Waterman’s light-hearted and pun-riddled verse, often on topics of Christopher Columbus or the emerging Exposition fairgrounds in Jackson Park, filled spots throughout the run Jewell N. Halligan’s Illustrated World’s Fair, published from 1891 through 1893. “Without his [...]

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The Fair as a Spectacle, Part 3: An Enormous Whirligig of Pleasure

By |2023-07-03T06:41:30-05:00July 2nd, 2023|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , , |

Continued from Part 2 [Note: This text includes names and descriptions now considered culturally disparaging. Please see our statement on “Potentially Offensive Text and Images.”] THE FAIR AS A SPECTACLE. How it seemed to a visitor—Strolling and dreaming by day and by night. By Charles Mulford Robinson Part 3: An Enormous Whirligig of Pleasure The entrance to the Plaisance was directly beyond this building. Serious purposed womanhood, as personified by the structure, stood before the Plaisance, blocking the way [...]

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“A Medley of the Midway Plaisance” by A. B. Ward

By |2022-10-07T08:01:02-05:00October 7th, 2022|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , |

The short story reprinted below is a romance set on the Midway Plaisance of the 1893 World’s Fair. Writing as “A. B. Ward,” Mrs. Alice Ward Bailey (1857–1922) was a prolific author of fiction around the turn of the twentieth century. The mawkish prose and bumpy pacing in this story may explain why the author is essentially forgotten today. Still, her dramatic sketch offers an intimate peek into the lives of fictional inhabitants of the Midway and invites us [...]

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A Wild Conglomeration of Absurd Fantasies

By |2022-10-04T06:06:59-05:00October 4th, 2022|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: |

On May 25, 1893, Mr. E. A. Hodge departed Marion, Kansas, heading to the World’s Columbian Exposition. A few days after arriving in Chicago, he wrote home advising other visitors: “Don’t plan to stay here less than ten days—thirty are better, and if you want to study the exhibits you can put in three months.” (Marion Record, June 9, 1893) His letter of July 7, printed in the July 27 issue of the Marion Record (when he finally had [...]

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Changes Coming to Midway Plaisance

By |2022-04-01T15:30:11-05:00April 3rd, 2022|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , |

“Passing under the Stony Island viaduct, we are in a new world, which, while it does not pretend to instruct, still conveys quite an amount of real knowledge, though carefully enshrouded in a sugarcoating of amusement.” —“The World's Columbian Exposition, a View from the Ferris Wheel” Scientific American September 9, 1893, pp. 169 70. The Midway Plaisance, a six hundred-foot wide by one-mile-long strip of land connecting Jackson Park on the east to Washington Park on the west, served [...]

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When Ward McAllister Sauced Chicago, Part 5

By |2022-03-17T20:14:18-05:00March 18th, 2022|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: , , , |

Dessert: Chilled Relations Continued from Part 4. “I have never called Chicago a pork-packing town.” —Ward McAllister As Opening Day of the 1893 World’s Fair approached, Chicago busied herself with final preparations for hosting millions of guests from around the world. The Exposition would be the biggest party ever thrown, and the names of many dignitaries populated the guest list. Royalty rolled down the Midway Plaisance when the Princess Eulalia, Infanta of Spain, visited the 1893 World’s Fair [...]

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“Halcyon Days in the Dream City’’ Part 8: Sights and Sounds of the Midway

By |2022-03-05T11:13:22-06:00November 13th, 2020|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: |

Halcyon Days in the Dream City by Mrs. D. C. Taylor Continued from Part 7 Will ever human foot tread such a "way" again? 'Twas as if one had "Aladdin's Lamp" or the wonderful carpet that transported one to any clime with the celerity of thought. One bears the booming of the Dahomian skin drums, and sees the terrible naked Amazons in their hideous dance; sees the Laplander wrapped in his furs and leading his reindeers; sees the Esquimeaux, [...]

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“Halcyon Days in the Dream City’’ Part 3: Cairo Street

By |2022-10-03T09:07:52-05:00November 4th, 2020|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , , |

Halcyon Days in the Dream City by Mrs. D. C. Taylor Continued from Part 2 A long stretch of high stone wall above which clearly outlined against the blue of the summer sky, is seen a confused medly [sic] of queer tiled roofs, glimpses of latticed and casement windows, and above all a tall minaret, the turban like top holding up star and crescent. We pay the magic twenty-five cents and step into a curving narrow street, lined with [...]

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